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Controvertial Subjects
Subjects that Rile Folk Up * Many find "too hot to handle". * Not for us. * This is NOT an occasion for "flameing" or ad hominem comment. * What IS its focus are subjects / topics for which there are no easy answers. * Usually indicative of entrenched opposing camps that would sooner undermine one another than seek common ground. * HERE we will aspire to that common ground. Cod Liver Oil & the Lilly-Livered * (A Propos ala Alain, A Riff ala Coltrane) * It's good for ya but tastes like crap * Both are common knowledge * You know both but choose to focus on just the taste. * It's god-awful, horrible & only a callus fiend would serve it up. * Yes, fiend.... A totally inhuman act & thus a fiend. * Banish the fiend for thou would forego bitter Cod Liver Oil forevermore. * Lilly-livered, dost thou not know that in ALL relations the ONE you meet is yourself ! * Clearly the map is not the territory. * Mitaguyasin, heyoka.... Rman Comments on "Cod Liver Oil" The Map is NOT the Territory * A basic premise of "General Semantics" & attributable to Count Alfred Korzybski. * No matter HOW detailed the map in your possession, when you actually walk the territory that is an experience no map could trully depict. * When you follow a principle, like an ethical imperative that places you on the horns of a dilemma, you can feel that your damned if you do & damned if you don't. * No matter how acute the insight BEFORE you make a fateful decision it can only give you a partialization of the AFTER fallout, the consequences that follow whatever course you decide. * Another vantage to formulating a best course, making decisions, involves 3 premises of far reaching significance. * "Ideas have consequences." * "We can be cut-down to nothing at any time." * "Act AS IF you've a handle on all the variants, all the outcomes, all the forces in play." * Out of that matrix decide, act & live. * Accept fallibilty, embrace it publically, is the only redemption. * Rman Comments of General Semantics Self-Fullfilling Prophecies * An interesting expression. * It presuposes "Power" so let me define that. * '''Power:'''the ability to cause or prevent change. * Thus "Self-fullfilling Prophecy" presupposes an extant state of power. * This power can manifest in a positive or negative form. * Actions to promote change leading to tangible achievement is the positive aspect. * A responsible excersise of that form of power entails due acknowledgement of a "greater good" beyond personal gain. * In one of its negative forms power is excercised to impede change that would lead to the "greater good" defined above. * Obstructions can take many forms but just 2 will be highlighted. * Overt acts of deliberate obstruction or attempts to undermine progress. Here you discern the opposition - they're not concealing intent & thus honor bound. * Then there are craven modus-operandi such as "Passive Aggressive" stances. * In a paradoxical way it is the powerless attempting to excercise power by doing nothing. * This is yet another characteristic of a feeble self-delusion that places personal gain above all. As if that alone in any way really mattered to progess in the greater world. * "Change leading to tangible accomplishment" is what unmasks a root powerless state & thus the "passive aggressive" defense. * Pitiful yes but also a source of dangerous resentments. * In some ways the perception is akin to the adage: * "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...." * To be unmasked as feeble is grounds for perpetuating a course of revenge characterized by exclusive focus on '''Un-doing'''. * This ilk reside in a true wasteland of mind & spirit I donot envy. More pointedly, it's necessary to guard against enervating influences that are its legacy. * The goal of these dark forces is to demoralize or dispirit & in that can be effective but only if granted the power by those who would forfeit a bit of their souls out of timidity. * Rman Comments on Power * I'm led to ask: * Can '''Power''' ever be neutral ? * Certainly not in its excercise. * But what of a case where "Power" can be wielded but is not ? * I'd have to say that this last case is a decision based on a position held & thus it cannot be neutral. * So I'm inclined to postulate that power in the possession of a living entity can never be held in neutrality. * It is always operating under some principle even when reigned-in. * Rman. Power & Its Meanings * "Self-interest" & "Self-gain" are not synonymous. * Indeed are often confused as the same in the realm of emotion. * What is the nature of "Power" in these 2 distinct arenas: "Self-interest" and "Self-gain".... * And where does that intersect the "Greater Good" ? * For that matter: What is the "Greater Good" ? * More l8r...... Rman. Power's Dynamic Geometry * When "Power" is sought only over oneself & NOT others it becomes transparent. * "Power" can be seen as a dynamic equation - a geometry in search of a tetrahedron thru tensegrity. * 2 of the 4 aspects, or continuums, that are better known: "Light & Dark" * The other 2, less known, are: "Attraction & Repulsion" * What I mean by this last is abivalence: peeps want & don't want it - that is "Power". * Power entails decisions with consequences that most would prefer someone else take responsibility for. * As such the quad dynamic is: Light & Dark..... Love & Hate... * Some hold in "absolutes" like black & white. * Others hold to "continuums" like shades of grey or fuzzy-sets. * Then there is a vast number of "True Believers" (secular or sacred) whose commitment can be seen as an "Escape from Freedom"..... More Hot Topics=